


A New Kind Of Fear

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Series: Me and the Major [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Kylo Ren Is A Creeper, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Sniper!Hux, Snoke the Eldritch Abomination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 17:03:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7626748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kylo Ren first met Armitage Hux, he was the Major. After the fall of Starkiller, the General goes down with his base.</p><p>As it turns out, though, both of them have a lot further to fall before they hit the bottom. If such a thing even exists.</p><p>(Alleged sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7213141"><i>The Slightest Shift In The Weather</i></a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Kind Of Fear

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those "experimental" things, in that I honestly couldn't tell you if more of it exists. For a variety of exceedingly boring reasons, I feel like my writing isn't really up to snuff, and I frankly feel pretty ashamed about posting this. But I had a lot of this planned out so I figured I'd finish it, and then put it out there for an opinion and see if people are interested in more misadventures of Major Hux and his erstwhile "companion" Kylo Ren. So, yeah: if you want to see more, please let me know. Otherwise I figure it will wither and die of its own accord, which may be the more merciful thing. At any rate, I got this far for the sake of [@saltandlimes](http://saltandlimes.tumblr.com/), who did so want to see what happened next. (And to those other people who regularly try to calm my brain and tell me that my writing is worthwhile: you are forever too good to someone who doesn't deserve any of it, and I love you. _Thank you_.)
> 
> I do have to blame David Lynch for Snoke here, too; I was watching _Dune_ and the existence of the Guild Navigators made me start wondering what longterm exposure to the Force, especially the Dark, would do to a person. Whoops. Incidentally, the title comes from [a song that I was listening to](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9mJ82x_l-E), and seemed appropriate. Ha ha.
> 
>  
> 
> _I wish I would've met you_  
>  _now it's a little late_  
>  _what you could've taught me_  
>  _I could've saved some face_  
>  _they think that your early ending_  
>  _was all wrong_  
>  _for the most part they're right_  
>  _but look how they all got strong_  
>  _that's why I say hey man, nice shot_  
>  _what a good shot, man._  
> 

Forty-three hours. Forty-three hours since the fall of Starkiller, and every one of them had been spent upon his feet. And the end did not come because he was finally allowed to rest. No, the end came only when he received word that Kylo Ren had awakened in the medbay.

As Hux gave over the bridge, he could at least be bitterly glad that Ren did not appear to be destroying the place. Perhaps whatever had happened to him down on the planet had crippled him enough to keep him quiet until the _Finalizer_ reached the distant coordinates of Snoke’s homeworld. Hux was still not fool enough to believe such uneasy peace would last.

Even with greatcoat slung over his shoulders, Hux felt yet the chill of Starkiller; it had soaked through to his bones, even when its last moments had been an inferno of crumbling mantle and molten metal. The taste of snow and ash burned upon his tongue, his throat dry as the dust he choked upon even now.

As he moved through the corridors Hux kept his head high and his eyes forward. It did little to distract him from the fact that the eyes of everyone he passed were averted, and yet somehow still upon him. Even without actively meeting a single gaze, he could feel their moods: exhausted, curious, resenting, fearful – but all somehow _ravenous_. And desperately so, in their desire for information, for consolation, for reassurance, for vengeance. But whether said vengeance was to be visited upon the Resistance, or their general himself for his failures, Hux could not say. He was not a mindreader.

He’d always left that sort of indecent idiocy to bloody _Ren_.

At the closed doorway he was met by a doctor and not a droid. It would have sent a faint frisson of alarm through him, had he not been too exhausted to give much of a damn at all. As it was, Hux barely kept up with the woman’s bland read-through of Ren’s extensive injuries, punctuated by the current status of each one. He waved the details away. He did not need to go any further than the overview. Ren was alive, and he would likely stay alive until Hux could hand him over to his master. That was all that mattered.

And yet he could not stop his feet from moving, nor his hand from pressing over the doorpad to allow him into the dim grey box of Ren’s sickroom.

The man himself lay motionless upon the bed. On his back, with eyes closed, he could have been a corpse laid out for the final rites – except, even at this distance, Hux could see the faint rise and fall of his heavily bandaged chest. The long cut, bisecting his face, had no such coverage; instead it had been dabbed liberally with bacta and left otherwise alone, shining red and furious. But even such damage did not detract from his face. And Hux stood very still at his bedside, staring down at what he had only seen in brief glimpses since their mission from the _Inquisitor_. Seven, eight years: and still Kylo Ren had the face of a boy, even a beaten one like this.

His eyes opened, sudden and staring. Answering words fell from Hux’s lips, spoken before thought.

“I should have taken you up on that offer.”

Though the dark eyes were clearly glazed with pain, they remained strikingly alert. From the doctor’s droning report, Hux knew Ren had accepted no tranquilisers, nor even simple analgesics. Still his voice slurred like a drunkard as his brow furrowed, and he asked, “What offer?”

“To come hunting.” And his gloved hands folded together, pulled apart, laced together again. “I would have taken that pilot’s legs out from under him. Left him alive, of course. Just functional enough for you to do your own work.” His smile, bitterly cold, cracked at all its icy edges. “But he certainly would not have been capable of walking, much less running off with some traitor Stormtrooper.”

Ren’s head moved from side to side, the lank dark hair stark against the sterile white of the mattress. His eyes never looked away from Hux’s own. “Well, if you’d just used a clone army like I suggested, the Stormtrooper wouldn’t have been an issue either.”

Some part of him wanted to smile. It was a dark and deep part, and one that yearned to reach forward, to run his finger in tender trace of the facial wound, before pressing its edges brutally apart. “Perhaps,” Hux mused, and his fingers spasmed, stilled once more. “Either way, Starkiller would still be standing.” He blinked, just once. “And she’s not.”

Ren’s face had gone distant, eyes unfocused, monstrous body very very still. “So Starkiller is gone.”

And Hux closed his eyes. Of course, Ren’s basic mental faculties had been long gone by the time they’d broken through the disintegrating atmosphere in his own command shuttle. Ren hadn’t been conscious even when Hux had fallen over him in the snow, the damned tracker’s functionality warped and inaccurate due to the fierce electromagnetic storms of the dying planet. And so: Ren had not seen what the viewports had to offer during their miserable running retreat. Ren had not been there when Hux had stared out onto the burning orb that had become the blazing ruin of his life’s work. So many years – gone in what felt to be mere seconds.

And Hux opened his eyes, stared down at Kylo Ren. “Starkiller is gone, yes,” he said, cold and careless.

But he still knew, in the aching chambers of an emptied heart, that it was very likely that soon enough he himself would follow her down into the same fate.

“He wouldn’t.”

Hux picked at the fraying seam of one cuff. He’d changed uniform only once in recent memory; the one stained with smoke and blood and snow and oil had been incinerated soon after he’d left Ren to the tender mercies of the med staff. He hadn’t even been back to his quarters since. “My thoughts are not some holomag to rifle through, Ren.”

Mildly as he gave this warning, Ren still flinched. “You’re not that easily replaced.”

With great resolve Hux curled his fingers to one fist, carefully laid it upon the edge of the bed; Ren’s eyes flicked to follow the motion. “In all honesty, Ren, I doubt Leader Snoke would wish me to be – the last thing he needs is another incompetent at the helm of his most important military operation.”

His words turned as petulant as his returned glance. “You’re not incompetent.”

Both hands moved together, laced tight at the small of his back. “I still failed.” The words came clipped, careful, utterly precise in diction and details. “There are consequences for that. I am prepared to bear them as I must.” Only now did he allow a curl of lips, the faintest sneer. “As we all should be.”

“You think he’ll dispose of me too, then?”

He saw no particular need to suppress a snort. “I should hardly think so.” Nor could he hold back the bitterness of what followed. “You’re rather…unique, shall we say?”

Now Ren moved his gaze to the ceiling, his oversized nose so terribly striking in profile. “Not as unique as I was,” he said, almost too quiet to be heard. And Hux really _did_ snort this time, greatcoat whispering as he set his shoulders further back.

 “That _girl_ destroyed Starkiller at the behest of both her own reprehensible _morals_ , and then also those of her new allies.” And he told himself he believed it even as he spat the words at a motionless Ren. “Leader Snoke cannot possibly believe _she_ would ally herself with our cause.”

But he looked only outward; even had his gaze not been blind, he’d have seen nothing there but the geometric patterning of the tiles. “He can be very…persuasive.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” Hux said, very sharp. “But she is too old. Too set in her ways.”

“He should have taken her as a child, then?”

Hux bit down on the very ugly reply his gut would have preferred to give, chose instead basic diplomacy. “It would leave her mind more malleable, yes.”

And Ren let his head roll sideways, eyes dark as the edges of the known universe. “Like yours was?”

The tremor through him felt to be a rupturing faultline, one uncharted and unknown. But his hands tightened, and his spine straightened, and Hux met his gaze with cool disregard. “I am raised from the ashes of the old Empire.”

And Ren snorted, a flash of pain flickering across the ruin of his face as he returned his gaze to what little the ceiling had to offer. “Weren’t we all?”

“I have no idea.” With shoulders held so stiff, no shiver could break his stance. “I don’t have any idea who you are.”

“Don’t you?”

Ren was smiling – strange, small, almost sad. Hux would have looked away, if he’d cared. “But then I suppose you weren’t so young when he took you.”

“You know nothing of what he did to me.”

The vitriol of those words shocked Hux to silence. It left them only the hum of the uncertain cradle of machinery arrayed about him, for all very little of it appeared to be attached to his body. Hux couldn’t find that odd, though it irritated him that it hadn’t be transferred to less cantankerous – and mystically-inclined – patients. But then, he had relayed to the staff only one real instruction: _our mission is to deliver Kylo Ren to the Supreme Leader alive. If he dies, ultimate responsibility falls upon me. But do remember that you have always your own culpabilities to accept._

“You do know that I am taking you to him?”

The sudden words had no effect on that still body. “After what I did, I have nowhere else to go.” His anger of before had quite evaporated; the bleak flatness could but remind Hux of lost Starkiller, of the great western tundra that had stretched for miles in flat white canvas. And Ren closed his dark eyes, shook his head once more. “The only path is forward. There is no going back.” Then, scarcely more than a whisper: “The Force is hardly so forgiving.”

That left them with only silence, again. Hux shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then allowed his eyes to fall upon the chair close by Ren’s bed. He had no memory of the last time he’d sat down. He could not help but fear what might happen should he choose to now.

“How can you think he will replace you?” Ren asked, sudden. “He asked you to bring me to him, didn’t he?”

 _All the easier to wring my neck with his own hands, perhaps?_ But Hux kept that cheery thought to himself, for all it at least implied he’d screwed up in such a way that even Snoke would take some pleasure in dealing to him personally. “I would suspect that Snoke understands I am the only one capable of handling you,” Hux said, instead, and earned himself a long stare that even he could not interpret; Ren’s expressive face had gone as blank as his lost helmet.

“Do you think that’s why he assigned me to the _Finalizer_?”

The abrupt words had Hux frowning. “What?”

“Is that why he assigned me to you?” he asked, sudden in his impatience. “Because he knew _you_ could handle me. In ways no-one else could.”

Confusion gave way to a bitter cold certainty. “I suppose that would depend on how much of your personal life you care to share with your Master.”

“He knows everything. Whether I wish him to or not.” And Ren’s lips folded – not a smile nor a scowl, but rather as if the words he spoke now were not at all those he thought to be saying in his mad little mind. “But if you want specifics, yes. He’s aware of what happened.”

Hux would be mortified, were he not so damned tired. Ren, for his part, now only appeared wistful. It left Hux with the weary, lingering desire to punch him in the throat.

“I remember it so well,” he said, slow and soft, and Hux rolled his eyes skyward, as if his skin hadn’t already begun to crawl and itch upon his bones.

“I suppose that’s a fringe benefit of your Force mind powers?”

“No.” His tongue, discoloured, slipped out between dry lips, rasped over them in restless useless motion. “Did you ever check the security feeds?”

Despite the ambient temperature of the medbay being held higher than elsewhere in the ship, Hux had turned colder than the poles of lost Starkiller. “Yes.” The words fitted oddly in his mouth, between numb lips. “They had been erased.”

Ren only smiled. And Hux’s hands tightened, to the point where his fingernails dug pincher-like into his skin, even beneath the fine leather of his gloves.

“ _You_ erased them?”

Ren huffed a sharp breath, clearly offended. “Who else could it have been?”

 _Thank kriff it wasn’t Natic_ , he muttered to himself, though to Ren he offered only, “It’s hardly any of your concern.” A moment later, he followed with a begrudging, “But I’m glad you did.”

Ren still smiled. Between his ghastly colour and the vicious saber wound, Hux had to resist the urge to look away. “I copied it first.”

And now he closed his eyes, stomach tight and twisting. “Actually, I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“But that’s how I remember it.” The joy in his voice, low and reverent, only rose with each more disastrous comment. “I _relive_ it,” he added, gleeful now. “Over and over and over again.”

“ _What_?”

Ren met his opened glare with simple pleasure. “I thought you’d be flattered.” The half-shadows curve of his lips now was but the faintest reminder of a night spent in the cool clean air of a cloudless night, high above where a man slept his last without even knowing. “Didn’t you know? You’re the only one I ever wanted.”

“You had no right to keep that,” Hux said, voice the low furious hum of a starship bringing itself around for a broadside barrage. And on his back, upon the bed, Ren only continued to smile. It had always been a crooked expression upon those lopsided features, but the jagged wound from cheek to temple now left it in utter grim ruin.

“Why not?” he asked, and the worst thing was that he sounded genuinely curious. “You gave yourself to me then.”

“I consented to _one incidence of sexual congress_ ,” he hissed back, even though he knew the security feeds in this room would also pick up every nuance of their conversation, the same way those of years ago had done. And one hand raked back through his hair, greasy with ash and soot and snow, and he clenched his eyes tightly shut. “Is _that_ what you’ve been doing this whole time?” And he shuddered to recall a thousand exchanges upon starship and base, Ren’s unsettling gaze creeping over his skin even from behind the expressionless mask of his helm. “Did you cause me all that trouble and grief and inconvenience and then…and then just go and _wank_ over some grainy security feed?”

His gaze had turned blurry and harsh, hands trembling as he met Ren’s own eyes again. With his skin still parchment-white, lips pursed, Ren shook his head, eyes fixed on the ceiling though they had busied themselves with the memory of something far more distant. “It’s actually very clear,” he said, slow and dreaming. “I can see _everything_.” And then he let his head roll, eyes snapping to sharp bright focus. “I always like being reminded of how you’re a natural redhead.”

Hux moved quicker mere thought, bare hands closing over Ren’s throat as he lunged forward, throwing all his weight down upon them. As from great distance, he heard some strangled sound of rage and grief and pure _fury_ , did not recognise it as his own. He _could_ not recognise it as his own. Hux was above such things.

Beneath his ever-tightening grip, Ren did not struggle. Even in the depths of this berserker rage Hux could dimly recognise that Ren probably _couldn’t_ , given his physical state and the medcare rendered since. But then, the Force was with him. Hux could feel it now, dancing and demanding upon the air. It thrummed around him like a dynamo spinning quicker, harder, pitching higher with every second Hux pressed down further. He didn’t care. The wide eyes, dark and lovely, watched him even as they began to glaze over. His too pale skin only grew more so; all the better to show up the lacy collar of bruises he would wear soon enough. Like a collar. Like Hux _owned_ him.

Ren’s mouth opened on a gasp, hips juddering up as his whole body gave over to sudden spasm. And Hux, upon the bed and straddling him, reflexively loosened his grip. One hand, Ren’s right, shot up, grasped him nail-deep around the forearm; even as Hux jerked back, Ren took another gasping breath, one quite unlike any desperate clutch at oxygen. This time, when Ren’s pelvis jolted up, wetness pressed hard against the seat of Hux’s trousers.

With a gasp of his own, Hux slithered off the bed too quick, hitting the floor at precisely the wrong angle, going down hard on one knee; only a painful slam of palms against the cold floor kept his nose from being smashed into the same. When he rose, swaying on uneven feet, his eyes widened as they took in the spreading stain beneath Ren’s thin medbay blanket.

But Hux was back on his feet. The shaking subsided as he locked his knees; the hair that had fallen into his eyes was swept fiercely back with one hand before they both locked behind the small of his back, snapping him back into almost perfect parade rest.

And when he met Ren’s bleary gaze, again, his own eyes were cold chips of interstellar ice. Somehow, though, his once exquisitely-trained voice was what betrayed him.

“You’re an animal, Ren.”

He coughed, just lightly, just enough. “Says the man who just tried to choke an invalid.”

Again, his hands ached to be nothing more than fists – and then, nothing more than buried in the half-ruin of his face. “You’re hardly that,” he said, lips numb, tone too high to be quite normal. “You could have killed me with a thought.”

And he sighed. “But I didn’t.” The dark head lolled, again, turned away; when he spoke again, his words held the wistful nostalgia of a holomovie heroine, all languid make-believe nonsense.

“But I _didn’t_.”

At his side, Hux stared down; Ren might not have used the Force to hold him here, but the idiocy of the situation worked just as well to the same purpose. His lips tightened. Nothing stopped him from walking away. Leaving the spoiled brat wallowing in his own filth was just about all Ren deserved.

But then, Hux could not bear the thought of even a droid attending to what Ren could not. All the records would show that the general had been the one with him, when Kylo Ren had apparently come all over himself in the middle of the medbay despite being so incapacitated he could scarcely even sit up. And the general’s fingerprints were all but engraved in the latticework of bruises about his throat. Data erasure or reconditioning could not be enough to bury even _that_ calibre of wild rumour.

The attached ‘fresher provided what little he needed – a dampened towel, warm and yet somehow harsh against the dry skin of palms and fingers. With gritted teeth, Hux asked no permission before yanking back the soiled sheet. Beneath, Ren did indeed lie entirely nude; the now flaccid length of him hung heavy over one thigh, cooling come tacky on thighs and groin.

Hux moved in quick, clinical strokes, even as the warm organ twitched again. Though he did not pause in his work, his mind tripped over the thought, again and again; his eyes returned to the sight more times than he could count, even in such short passage of time. He had never really had a good look at it, back in the dim ambience of the officer’s lounge. In the harsh light of the medbay, he had to wonder at the fact he’d managed to take such an entirely monstrous length inside his own body, once.

 _Only once_. He closed his eyes, and wondered if that had been the moment when his entire life had first started to go so very wrong.

Opening his eyes again, Hux finished his work. Ren obligingly didn’t move. He told himself it wasn’t because he likely couldn’t. But as Hux drew back, Ren sighed, head turned away. All his smiles and happiness of earlier had vanished like the sun beneath a jagged horizon.

“He wants to see us.”

He should have just moved to the refresher. Instead he stood, eyes narrowed. “Of course he will want to see us. He asked us to come to him.”

“No.” Ren closed his eyes. “Sooner than that.”

“What?”

“I can hear him.” And again, a sigh; almost childish, like a toddler grudgingly accepting his bedtime had arrived. “Tomorrow. He’ll see us tomorrow.”

Hux had not spoken to Snoke since he had seen him last, with masonry falling through the stuttering remnants of his hologram. A ripple of something like fear jolted through him, though he immediately answered it with the fact that he had been collating data and filing reports since the moment the _Finalizer_ had made the jump to lightspeed, leaving the ruins of Starkiller to collapse in upon themselves.

“You won’t be ready,” he said, not knowing to whom he really spoke. And Ren chuckled, low and aching.

“I’m always ready. This is what I did this for.” The bitterness was a strange pulse, like the throb of a wound filled almost to bursting with purulent horror.  But then: something stranger yet glittered in those pain-hazed eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then? General?”

The title crawled across his skin, somehow more insult than respect. “I suppose it is inevitable.”

And his strange eyes slipped closed, bandaged chest rising and falling in low, fatalistic sigh. “It has been for a very long time.”

“Good night, Ren.”

But the other man said nothing more, even when Hux lingered a mistaken second longer, silhouetted in the door. He turned away with a scowl. And didn’t know why it hurt.

 

*****

 

Hux had attended many difficult meetings in his life. But never had he needed to approach one with such failure behind him, driving him in and down to his knees. And never had he been in the company of a fellow co-commander – and one so gravely injured that had he been anyone else, Hux would have been propping up a corpse.

Snoke appeared arrayed before them both, smaller upon the _Finalizer_ in her more restricted space. His immediate regard and silence appeared more thoughtful than accusing. Wordless, still, he extended those long fingers – pale, skeletal, possessing entirely more joints than necessary. Hux watched, face set and still. Snoke held humanoid form, perhaps, but Hux had never been able to work out his species. And he had no-one to ask, especially as he doubted even Ren would know.

Snoke didn’t smile. Hux wasn’t sure he was capable of it, with a face such as his. But there was something almost soft in his words when he drawled, “I have a new task for you both.”

“Of course, Supreme Leader.” Even on his knees, Hux could not rein in his desire to set right what had been wronged. Looking up into those strange, liquid eyes, he swallowed hard, and moved to bite down into a humble pie made entirely of regret and foolish error. “I am of course prepared to make a full report on the Starkiller situation—”

“I don’t wish to hear it.” Hux reared back, as if the words had been a slap delivered across his bloodless features, even as Snoke added, “I already know all that I need to.” When he blinked then, very slow, Hux had the uneasy sensation that Snoke had double the usual set of eyelids. “But yes. I must address the matter of your command.”

Any further words tangled in a tight throat. With Hux before him now, his proudest orator unable to speak, Snoke now did smile – or at least, he indulged in the cruellest excuse for one the ruin of his face could create.

“I have already said that you will come to me – and with my apprentice.” Leaning back into his great simple throne, Snoke said, “The _Finalizer_ ’s command is no longer yours.”

Hux had thought nothing else would strike him down the way Starkiller had. But the floor beneath his feet felt to crack and buckle, his head light as helium. “I see.” But Hux held his place, even as his world collapsed. And he bowed his head. “Supreme Leader.”

“And you will have no need of your current command.” Snoke paused, just a moment. “But what rank shall I give you now?”

Once, Hux might have believed Snoke to be above such things, the faintly mocking tone of his rasping voice more injurious than the words themselves. But Ren’s voice, eager, sudden, cut deeper yet.

“Major.” And he was clumsily rising from his knees, eyes wide and glittering with the reflected image of his holy master. “Oh, please – make him the _Major_!”

And not even a lifetime of military protocol, hard-learned and even harder earned, could stop Hux’s aghast shout. “ _Ren_!”

“Major.” And he flinched as the sound came from above him, already turning back to where Snoke gazed benevolently down at them both: his shamed general, his precious apprentice, who was yet to be censured at all for his considerable failures. “ _Major_ ,” Snoke repeated, rolling it around his tongue, or whatever it was he chose to speak with. The glint in his eye left Hux with the terrible sensation of nakedness – the memory of Ren’s words.

_He knows everything. Whether I wish him to or not._

“I have a ship, in the hangar.” Snoke’s gesture invited them both to rise, careless, his attention already elsewhere. “You will come to me now.”

And even as he stumbled into full parade rest, Hux could not still his tongue. “Will it have the hyperspace capability to travel such distance?”

Instead of irritation, Snoke spoke only with almost lazy amusement. “My apprentice has shown you something of the Force. But even he does not know what it is that it can truly do. For those who give themselves to it utterly.” And the conviction in his voice then, resonant and regal, almost again brought Hux to his knees. “ _I_ will bring you to me.”

His voice rasped, even as Ren stood silent at his side, eyes wide and shining as he gasped up upon his master. “ _How_?”

“I will fold the space between us. You will come to me without moving so much as a moment in time.”

“But—”

He chuckled. “So little faith, Major.”

At last, Hux had no more words to say. Such wordlessness burned, left him as little more than cold ashes as he stared up at the horror of the Supreme Leader.

“You will come to me. Both of you.” At his side, Ren sighed; it shivered through Hux, the faintest memory of the heat of him, when Kylo had pressed against him so many years ago. And Snoke’s smile grew crooked and cruel, as if he knew exactly what Hux remembered.

“And then, we shall see what can be made of what’s left.”

In the silence, in the dark, Hux’s neck ached from the upward angle he could not yet surrender, for all Snoke’s hologram had dimmed to nothing. His _spine_ ached, rigid and trembling both, his stance perfect for all his military career now lay in boneless tatters around his feet.

“ _Major_.”

The shiver of it tripped in cruel merriment down the ladder of his vertebrae, and Ren’s eyes upon him were the fresh burn of unchecked solar radiation. But Hux could not move. He could do nothing but look blindly to where Snoke had taken so much from him, and then given him so much worse in return.

And Ren’s head dipped low, lips terribly close to one exposed ear. “Don’t forget your rifle,” he whispered in soft joy. “I know you have it still.”

Now he turned, fury rising along with bunched fists. But the weight of the greatcoat slung over his shoulders held them down, held them back – with the mockery of its ranking bars, those that were not his own any longer.

And somehow even Ren’s strange eyes, so like fragments of unknown deep space forced into the strange mismatch of his facial features, had turned almost kind. “There were so many who did not understand her,” he said, sudden. “Starkiller, I mean.”

Hux only just resisted the urge to take his fingers, and claw his own eyes out from their aching sockets. “Ren—”

“They thought you stood upon her as only her ships figurehead, a make-believe general far removed from the field. Watching from a distance, while the true soldiers did all the work in your name.” And he laughed, low, breathless, more motion than sound. “But that was the _point_.” He stood too close then, the heat of his hulking body fierce unwelcome warmth against his own ice-riddled skin. “I’ve seen it myself. That is how you _hunt_.”

Hux drew a shuddering breath; from the lightheaded sway of his parade stance, it had not helped. “ _Ren_.”

“I understood.” The thoughtful words were an invocation, weaving about his roiling thoughts like gentle fingers over raw naked skin. “She was like your rifle. Held in your hands. Poised and loaded, aimed and fired from great distance – and yet, with perfect precision.” One hand curved forward, fingertips tracing first hair, then along the line of a tense still jaw. “It is simply the way of your hunt. You are removed from the carnage you create: a watchful, vengeful god.” Again, he smiled, the expression dark and dragged down by the scar of cheek and temple. “But with a flick of fingers: you create _chaos_. Which is but the inevitable precedent of total final order.”

Yanking his fingers back, taking two stumbling steps in retreat, Hux found himself breathless, chest heaving as though he’d sprinted the length of the _Finalizer_ herself. “Where the kriff did _you_ learn to speak like that?”

There was something alien and strange in the way he tilted his head then, inhumanly dark eyes fixed upon Hux alone, twinned back holes leading to the same endless event horizon of the mind behind them both. “I am the son of orators, of blooded royalty and elected command.” He stepped closer. “I know of what I speak.” One hand reached out, reached forward. “I know of what I _see_.”

And he could do nothing but turn away, head bowed, lips tight and fists aching as he moved only just beyond his reach. “Leave me alone, Ren.”

“ _Major_.” And his voice caressed the word, tender, almost loving – almost worse than his gloved touch, upon one shoulder. “I always knew that we’d meet again.”

Hux yanked back, almost stumbled. “Get away from me.”

For his part, Ren did not attempt to approach him again. And yet, an odd kind of peace radiated from him – so very at odds, with the weeping creature he had drawn from the snow. Ren had not been conscious, then, no. But Hux had still run gloved fingers along the frozen lines of his tears.

It was impossible that Ren should be standing now. Three cycles ago, he should have been dead. As little as one cycle ago, he had been unable to move. And yet now he stood beside Hux, shaking his head, still so very alive.

“But I truly am sorry,” Ren said now, eyes still bright, cheeks high flush – an acolyte, taking strength in his god’s granted favour. “For your loss, I mean,” and now he frowned, his expression fading. “I knew what she meant to you.” His step echoed about the now empty chamber, forward and slow. “I know what my actions took from you.”

Hux stepped back. “This conversation is over.”

And though Ren paused, it was no surrender. He only smiled, that strange and terrible broken thing. “For now.”

The truth of that, bitter and bright, tasted to him like the memory of snow and ashes.

Hux moved only two corridors over from the projection suite before pulling out the datapad from his greatcoat. Amongst the myriad of new messages received since he had entered, one stood out. Even as he opened the thing with dull interest, the oddity of it still struck him; he did not know if the Supreme Leader maintained aides of any kind, or if the peculiar creature had written it himself.

It proved simple and to the point: Snoke’s instructions were little more than a list of essential items to pack, the assigned time of departure upon Ren’s own Upsilon, and that a chosen pilot would fly them to a pre-set destination. That proved something of a relief, even if he pitied the poor bastard assigned to what would likely be a thankless task.

Walking the path to his chambers ended only in the bitterness of keying his biometrics, knowing that it was likely the last time they would ever offer him access to this level of executive accommodation. Even as he set all lights to full, refusing to shy away from the harsh reality of the current situation, all it did was illuminate how few personal effects were scattered about his quarters. He had been stationed here for nearly three years.

_And now, I am not._

Within a few efficient moments Hux had dressed in his only non-regulation clothing. The neat canvas bag was next filled with the folded components of three uniforms, underclothes, and sleepwear. The entire operation would likely be entirely in vain, at least for the external wear; Hux would either need to rip away the rank markings, or be court-martialled for contempt. He packed them anyway. In no known universe would Armitage Hux go naked. He would strip the clothes from Ren’s own back first.

But the cursed creature had been right about one thing. On his knees, Hux released first the footlocker, and then the battered case within. It lay heavier in his hands than he remembered. Rising, slinging the strap over one stiff shoulder, Hux turned out the lights – and only then let the door close behind him.

The corridors were oddly quiet as he descended the maze of elevators and walkways that would take him down into the hangar. He could not be sure he was glad his shame would be so unobserved; Hux had never been a man to shy away from what was deserved.

The hangar itself proved entirely deserted, an entirely unnatural state that might have made him turn around had he not noticed the one exception. A blonde head moved close by the motionless Upsilon, one both familiar and not. Like himself she was dressed in civilian garb, though the perfect lines and cleanliness gave even such a drab outfit a military air as she first straightened and then turned to him, eyes narrowed and so very very blue.

“Captain.” Already Hux had some idea of the answer before he voiced the inevitable question aloud. “What brings you here?”

“I have been removed from my command pending further investigation.” One hand rose, passed back through the short hair; there was something oddly self-deprecating in the gesture, which was not mirrored by the flat fact of her words. “Although it seems I do maintain my rank, in the meantime.”

And Hux smiled, tight-lipped and quiet. “That’s a generosity I myself have not been granted.” Before she could ask, drawing out the humiliation longer than it had any right to be, he said with careful inflection, “Leader Snoke himself saw fit to take from me both command and rank.”

Her answering rigidity came from more than a lifetime of military training. “I apologise.”

Though he wished nothing more than to wave it away, to lay the blame elsewhere, Hux had known what had been made his, the day he’d stood before the highest officers of the Order and had his highest rank conferred upon him. “It was my own failure, Captain.”

“But mine did not aid you in any way.”

Her insistence was a low, pulsing thing. It only made the constant headache behind his eyes all the worse. “Perhaps not. But I’m in no mood for apologies, I’ve had enough of them today as it is.”

Those words, at least, gave her pause – though she only answered with a raised eyebrow. Snorting, Hux trailed his fingers along the metal lip of his rifle case, and shook his head.

“Would you believe _Kylo Ren_ apologised to me for the loss of Starkiller, and his role in it?”

“If anybody but you were saying so, then no. I wouldn’t believe it.” It seemed even Phasma, legendarily disinterested in anything beyond her own command, could not help her curiosity. “Did he mean it?”

“You know, I believe he actually did.”

Perhaps it was stranger still, Hux mused, than he himself was not even lying. Quiet fell between them now, even as he ached for a cigarra – yet for all the _Finalizer_ could handle such vices without the threat of damage to vital systems, even Hux had not permitted such practices in the hangars themselves.

_And it’s not even your ship, anymore._

Instead, his eyes shifted down to his standard issue canvas bag, neatly packed and anonymous at his feet. The rifle case now lay at its side, propped up against the shuttle before them. It sat there as if mocking, dark wings folded, as watchful and silent as any predator waiting to take their calculated strike.

“What rank did he leave you?”

He closed his eyes against the bitter taste. “Major.”

Even her stoic demeanour had to break, for something. “ _Major_?”

Opening his eyes, Hux found he couldn’t meet the startled blue of those wide eyes; his reply came only muttered as he looked instead to the shuttle. “There _is_ a reason for it.”

“And would that reason be named Kylo Ren?”

She’d regained her sarcastic equilibrium quick enough; he chuckled without humour in return. “It would be, indeed.”

“Then he maintains something of his old position with the Supreme Leader.”

 _He wasn’t even chastised for his failings_. And her musing tone, a clear invitation to further speculation, only left him achingly tired. “So it would seem.”

For a long moment, nothing more passed between them. Phasma’s long fingers, strikingly pale against the shimmering surface, moved in rhythmic tap over the Upsilon’s hull; he could almost imagine her before some instrument, on the verge of coaxing true song from an otherwise inanimate object.

“Are you certain he had any influence over what rank you now hold?”

The memory of the projection suite burned him still. He had not actually expected Snoke to discipline Ren before Hux himself, but even that had not been what had disturbed him most. No, the desperate _desire_ on Ren’s face, the animation of his words as he’d asked for him—

“Oh, I am very certain.” For his own part, Hux now leaned back against the shuttle himself, arms folded over his chest. It was absolutely beyond regulation. Had he been a general, he’d have sent himself to reconditioning without a second thought.

“The first time we met,” he said, very slow, “I was only a major.”

Surprise was unusual upon Phasma’s well-ordered features, and she did not wear it well. “You met him before the _Finalizer_?”

Inclining his head, Hux only just checked the urge to indulge in some overly dramatic sigh. “I have been on a previous mission with him, in fact.”

Now her arched eyebrow danced dangerously close to even her severe hairline. “Really.” And he could feel her disapproval radiating from her, thrumming hot and heavy. “I had not realised.”

He could not begrudge her the irritation. Since Ren’s posting to the _Finalizer_ , she and her men had often accompanied Ren to various planets and systems on his wild missions. Hux had had a personal report on each and every one of them – and despite Ren’s erratic ways, had never once offered any frontline insight as to how she might deal with him in the future. “Certainly we never spoke of it again,” he said, as diplomatic as he might be. Her lips pursed, fingers moving in staccato beat.

“It did not go well?”

“It went perfectly.”

The rhythm paused. “Oh.”

And Hux might have laughed, had he actually found anything genuinely amusing in anything of this relentless disaster. “He was different, then.”

“In what way?”

Phasma had always been unrelenting, even with her superior officers – and in honesty, he was hardly that far above her, now. But he owed her an answer, if for nothing less than the fact they had been long comrades. “He was less…volatile.” He left the other descriptor unspoken: _more human_. “Arrogant and cocky, yes. But then, he did not truly need my skills at the time. It was…some kind of a test, I assume.”

Pressing her lips together, she breathed briefly through her nose, and then shook her head. “Presumably you passed it.”

“I’m not certain the test was specifically meant for me.” The words felt strange in his mouth, a suspicion spoken aloud for the very first time. “And I cannot be sure he did not fail it.”

“What makes you say that?”

Yet they had no time for further conversation: already Hux could feel his approach, as if summoned by his spoken name. They both turned to watch him come. Kylo Ren remained hooded, but still unmasked. Without that barrier between them, Hux could clearly see his eyes, their troubled weight heavy upon him alone. But when he drew close, his brow furrowed – and for the first time he deviated from his path, glancing sideways. Then, he stilled to unnatural stance. The shift in the air was in its charge, the fierce excitation of electrons – the dance of static song across skin.

“What is _she_ doing here?”

Of course Ren would not have bothered to read the debriefing. “She’s our pilot,” Hux said, meeting Ren’s eyes without actual challenge – but also, utterly without any expectation of denial. And Ren’s eyes darkened, gloved hands rolling to fists at his sides.

“I can fly my own shuttle.”

“Yes, but you’re still injured. And while I myself am qualified to fly an Upsilon, I haven’t flown anything outside a sim in years.” Hux tasted sharp ozone coating his lips, its faint undercurrent of promised violence only rising; his own voice, he cracked like a whip through the thickened air. “This isn’t up for debate, Ren. It’s a direct order from Leader Snoke himself.”

Still Ren turned on her, voice low and mechanised for all the vocal modulator was long since destroyed. “But why would he want _you_ , Captain?”

Phasma might have been a recovered shard of dead Starkiller herself: tall and still, with ice-blue eyes and the snow-pure glint of her platinum hair. “I don’t believe it’s for me to say.”

Ren stared. She stared back. Hux only watched, knowing that the two of them had endured such standoffs before. It was Ren who turned away.

 _But not for her. Not for me. He does this for **Snoke**_.

“Then we go. Now.”

Already the ship’s hatch yawned open, ramp descending with a screech that spoke more to the power of the Force than its more traditional hydraulics. Clomping with all the grace of a luggabeast, Ren stormed up and into the ship. Only when they had both watched him disappear entirely from view did Hux cock his head towards his path, even as neither of them stirred so much as an inch.

“Well, I suppose he technically outranks us both.”

Phasma blinked, her pale eyes carefully bland. “ _Technically_ , he’s not within the military command structure at all.”

“Will you tell him that, or shall I?”

Her smirk was a bold, brilliant thing. “After you.”

Yet even her good humour could not help but be soured for him, given the odd leaving off of rank at the end of her words. It should have rankled; Hux had never had the slightest patience with pity. But he also could not deny the slight warmth in his chest as he moved past her, and into the depths of Ren’s personal shuttle.

To his surprise, few obvious modifications had been made to the interior. Some part of him was just glad it had not been made over in black duraplastic or some similarly ridiculous aesthetic. It simply proved much the same as any other Upsilon Hux had lately been passenger in, for all the number was decidedly few.

After stowing his two bags carefully, Hux took his seat in the passenger compartment; the cockpit only allowed for two, and he had no interest in arguing with Kylo Ren over who would share the space with Phasma. Yet, even as settled himself with as much dignity as the situation might muster, he felt: oddly _lonely_ , seated alone in a compartment that could have accommodated ten.

Yet for all the peculiarities and uncertainties of the near future, Hux found himself half-dozing as the ship went through pre-flight checks. Even the exit from the hangar did not fully rouse him again. It was almost too easy to tell himself it was the fact he hadn’t snatched more than three or four hours of consecutive sleep in the last sixty. But he really just didn’t want see his ship slip from his grasp.

“Hux.” The voice knifed through the air between them, hot and harsh. “You should see this.”

He would have been startled enough by Ren’s use of his name; the fact he stood almost close enough to slap made it all the worse. And for a moment, Hux’s hand twitched, yearned for nothing more than to make a fist, to drive up _hard_ into the organs beneath the hard muscle of his solar plexus—

“Major—”

“ _Shut up_ ,” he snarled, half-rising on an already aborted blow – and then he sank back, eyes wide and words muted he actually _looked_ at Ren. The man had removed his robe, revealing that he actually wore mufti beneath; Hux had somehow expected him to be still prancing about in his robes and cowl, for all he and Phasma had been ordered to leave behind their own uniforms.

Now he felt to be the one taken low in the abdomen by some dirty shot, faced with such uncomfortable reminder of the person he had once travelled with. The clothing might be quite different – Kylo had been dressed as a smuggler on the Outer Rim, while now Ren presented himself as something of a society youth. What he wore could hardly be called ostentatious, but he would not have looked out of place on the political streets of Hosnian Prime. The only thing that ruined the effect was his scarring wound, and the wild hair that framed his face like the dark corona of a collapsing star.

And Ren was already turning away, already expecting him to follow. “I thought you might like to see it.”

Hux stayed seated. “See what?”

“How Snoke will move us to him.”

Ren had by now paused in the arching doorframe between compartment and front. Though he did not look back, neither did he move forward. And for all Hux might have played this game with him, once, his hand was already wearily moving to the release of his restraints. “Have you seen it before?” he asked, not even knowing that he cared to hear any answer. Still, he frowned at the low reverence of Ren’s single-syllable reply.

“No.”

With his usual quick economy of movement, Hux followed Ren to the front. Thankfully, the _Finalizer_ lay behind, in their blind wake; even now, with Ren’s insistence, he still would not have to watch her ignominious exit from his life.

Phasma remained in the pilot’s seat; their ship, idling in the vacuum. For all any of her ‘troopers would not have known the tells, Hux himself could sense the captain’s faint unease. But still, even without the vocal modulator, her voice held the certainly of rich command as she tapped one of the quiescent panels. “These are the coordinates we were ordered to hold steady at. We merely await further communication from Leader Snoke.”

“He’s already doing it.”

Hux angled around, to where Ren stood in what few shadows the small space offered. “What?”

And he had closed his eyes, face expressionless and still. “I can hear him.”

“What, he can’t use the comms like everyone else?” Hux asked without thinking; even as Phasma drew a low short breath at his side, Ren almost smiled.

“He can hear you, Major.”

It rose up in his throat, lodged there like bitter gall: the urge to snarl, to shout, _as if I care, anymore!_ But he did care. And thus, he remained silent even as he returned his gaze to the front viewport. _I will fold space_ , Snoke had said. As if anyone had ever managed it. Hyperspace flight had long been the only reliable way to move anything of mass from place to place with any real speed and safety.

But even his ordered mind could not deny the sudden strangeness – the way the view before him appeared to shift and blur, even when he narrowed his eyes to refocus it. A humming in the air, the faint prickling fear of unseen ionising radiation; a shiver skipped down his spine while his hands reflexively closed over his chest, fingers tight around his upper arms. Phasma drew a deep breath before him, her eyes slipping closed.

Ren’s eyes reminded wide, watchful. And thus, Hux kept his own open even as the space outside appeared to shrink, to pull in upon itself even as they themselves remained the same. Everything of the motion was patently impossible. And yet Hux felt as if, for a moment, he was being pushed beyond the very limits of the universe. As if they were: _outside_.

“What’s going on?” he whispered, wondering – and his voice trembled, tore at its edges as if it were too much in too little. And Ren shook his head, never looked away.

“Hush.”

“Ren,” he said, very small, even as his ears began to ache. Again, he shook his head.

“Major.”

“ _Ren_.”

And a hand reached out, fingers winding around his own. “Close your eyes,” he murmured, and held tight. “It’s easier, for you. When you don’t have to _see_.”

And he did, on a gasp of desperate air; his head filled with great cracking pressure, and he might have cried out, had his throat not closed over. Then: nothing. No sound, no movement – save, now, for slipping away of Ren’s warm fingers. Hux opened his eyes, and could only stare at the inexplicable shift in stars, in systems: they had crossed lightyears in what had been little more than a blink of an eye.

“Ren.”

He stirred beside him, Phasma still silent before them both. “What?”

“Can _you_ do this?”

At the crack in Hux’s words, he sighed; it might have been disappointment, or perhaps even shame. “No.”

And Hux turned on him then, one hand thrusting out to brace himself against the hull. “Was it the Force?” he demanded. “Did the _Force_ do this?”

With another sigh, Ren nodded. “Yes.”

“ _How_?”

Now Ren’s eyes flickered away, to the planet now taking up so very much of their viewport. “Snoke is an ancient creature, and strong indeed in the Force.” Glancing back now to Hux, weariness warred with clear pleasure. “It… _changes_ things, with time. With prolonged exposure. With…the acquisition of skill, and knowledge.”

And something had changed in his own face, leaving it twisted and strange. While Hux had seen genuine pleasure there, when Ren had stood before his master, something seemed wrong, now. As if Hux now observed truly a creature in the process of being undone, and then remade. In this uncertainty stood the human ruin that was Kylo Ren, awaiting the guidance of a true master.

“This is too much,” he said, hoarse, accented oddly by something he could not name. And Ren only shrugged, shaking away his strange melancholy as though it should never have existed.

“It is not even all there is,” he said, very quiet. And then, louder, “Come, Major. We should sit, for the landing.”

Hux expected Ren to remain with Phasma. Instead, he did not leave him. Enduring Ren’s presence only became all the more difficult as they broke atmosphere, rendering in reality the terrible familiarity of a planet he had never even seen before, outside of holos.

The landing became an extended experience, the chosen port busy and slow to navigate. Hux could sense Phasma’s frustration from even across the space between them. His own emotions were a more difficult thing to understand, and yet: he did not want to know what he felt at all. He remained wordless as he collected his rifle case, slung it over one shoulder while palming the thick bag in his other hand. Phasma carried only one bag, her own sidearm well-concealed. Ren emerged with nothing at all, save his own peculiar self.

_But then, did the Supreme Leader ever want anything more of him anyway?_

Outside the port buildings, Hux found himself blinking into the bright light upon the transport platform. The sky stretched above them, gridlocked by immense skyscrapers and criss-crossed with speeders and other vehicles. He knew that the entire surface would yield the same thing: every inch of the planet, a city.

And when he looked back, it was to find Ren staring at him with open wonderment. “You’ve never stepped foot upon Coruscant.”

“Of course I bloody haven’t!” It exploded from him, his chest tight and his voice too high-pitched, scraping along the burning lines of his throat. “I was born on _Arkanis_ , Ren! And after we were run out as the Empire collapsed, I lived on starships in the Unknown Regions! My father took me into _exile_! Of course I’ve never stepped fucking foot on fucking _Coruscant_!”

And only when Hux ran out of oxygen, chest heaving, cheeks burning and eyes blue flame, did Ren speak again. “Are you done?”

With a snarl, he turned away, fists aching, legs restless in their desire to do nothing else but stalk as far away from Ren as they might take him. But this was not his ship. This was not his system. This was not his _home_.

In reality, Hux had nowhere to go.

“Major.” And he shuddered to feel him so close, again. “We have an appointment to keep,” Ren added, “and for all you do not look to be what you were, you should be careful.” A pause, then: “The First Order here is quiet, and concealed.”

He spun around so fast they ended up nose to nose. “Did you _know_ they were here?” he hissed.  “That _he_ was here?”

“No.”

Hux wanted to shout again. Wanted to this time scream _liar!_ and punch him in the face – first once, then twice, then thrice, and then as many times as it might take to turn it into an oozing mass of soft tissue and broken bone. Instead, his bare hand closed over the strap, knuckles white and nails digging deep into the soft give of is weathered leather. With jaw set, and head held high, he looked ahead, and saw nothing at all.

“Where are we to go?” Phasma had shouldered her own bag, her face now clouded with clear annoyance at the scene playing out before her. “I had no orders beyond landing.”

Ren’s beatific smile was a thing of utter horror. “There is a transport waiting.”

And again, Hux itched to do nothing more than unshoulder his rifle, level it at his terrible face, and pull the trigger until the magazine’s charge blew itself dry. “You said you didn’t know he was here.”

With a shake of his head, that awful cloud of dark dark hair, Ren chuckled; he resembled nothing so much as a child before his life day, his gifts guaranteed, all his dreams about to come true. “I didn’t know he was here. But – I can hear him.” And then, tilting to the left, “ _Major_.”

Even though he’d already turned away, his stomach still squirmed. “Don’t call me that.”

“But it’s who you are.”

And his own answering laughter was dry, the parched remnants of the desert fields of Jakku where the Imperial armada even now mouldered back to dust. “I have no idea who I am anymore.”

For whatever reason – and Hux told himself that he didn’t care what it was – Ren didn’t attempt to reply to that. Rather, he moved forward, did not look back; he did not need to, as both he and Phasma fell into formation behind him. It came so easy, this return to lowered rank. And Hux did not look anywhere but forward as they came to a small, sleek silver thing that was piloted by a faceless droid.

After the passage of what felt to be hours, but likely was anything but, it conveyed them to their destination: a great towering building of gleaming metal and shimmering transparisteel, though by comparison it seemed no more or no less than those around it. Rather, it was perfectly innocuous by its anonymity. They moved inside with silence as their fourth companion, as they had taken the entire trip through the bustle of the city. The faint military air of the staff they encountered within the echoing halls of the foyer was the only subtle indication of their true nature.

As they idled before an elevator, left in their uneasy silence by a young man who had scarcely spoken ten words, Hux felt his nails raking over damp palms. He had nothing else to worry them against; they had left what little luggage they had brought with them in the transport. It hit him then, with the strength of a turbolaser barrage: the sudden desire to turn around, to go back. To hold his rifle in his hands again. To stare down its sights and just _fire_.

“Hux?”

Even in her carefully modulated voice, Phasma’s concern burned like ultraviolet. “He can’t be here,” he said, conversational, too high as he levelled his eyes at the closed doors. “This is just a stopover. A changeover. We’re to take another ship. To where he really is.”

“Major.”

He whirled on Ren, hands fisted in his foppish high collar. “ _Stop calling me that_!”

“Hux.” Phasma’s voice was a low pulse, her hand bruise-tight around his wrist. “Stop it. _Please_.”

He subsided, drew back – but even as he turned away, he caught the glare Ren directed at Phasma. The venom of it would have had a lesser being cowering, head covered, curled into a foetal ball. Phasma remained utterly unmoved by it, as silent as any of them as the lift arrived. Almost as a single unit they stepped within, watching as it accepted them before closing its doors and whisking them up.

The lift had no control panels of its own – it only went to one floor, and that at the very pinnacle of the building. The room it opened onto had no walls, only an endless loop of transparisteel, offering a full view of the city below. A single figure stood at its centre, unnaturally tall, as motionless as any statue.

And when he turned, it was as if all light had fled from his side. “Ah,” he drawled, and began to cross the floor with preternatural speed. “You are here at last.”

Without warning Hux gave into the absurd need to drop to his knees, to press first his palms and then his forehead to the ground. He had never been so very _tired_. And, for all he’d been the General over Starkiller and the face of the Order’s unholy propaganda machine, Hux understood for the very first time how one person could have such influence over so many.

Snoke stepped closer still. While hardly as tall as his projections, he still towered over even Ren, spindly and narrow and too thin to be real. Yet his power hummed about him with vicious veracity, soothing and strange even as Hux felt it crawl over his skin like a thousand curious fingers.

“So at last you begin to see,” he murmured, and bent forward from the waist. One hand extended, but it was the will of the Force that tilted Hux’s head up. And then, when he was forced to stare into the cool patchwork of Snoke’s features, the Supreme Leader nodded as if this had always been how it would be.

“Welcome to Coruscant, Major Hux.”

His eyes stung, heart stuttering in a too-tight chest as he managed to croak his reply. “But why are we here?”

And despite the undeniable magnetism of the creature before him, Hux’s gaze flicked sideways, focused with difficulty upon where Kylo Ren stared Snoke alone. Fearful worship shone in his wide eyes, hands fisting and relaxing, his entire body wrought of a rich desperation to reach forward, even as something in Hux screamed it should never be allowed.

And Snoke sighed, knowing, the softest end of laughter.

“My apprentice was conceived in the place where Darth Vader died,” Snoke replied, very nearly gentle. “But this, is where he _lived_ – and now, so too shall Kylo Ren.” His too-long arm, double-jointed and narrow in his sweeping robes, reached up to encompass the great city beyond the dizzying viewport. The smile above it all was a terrible thing, all teeth and tearing skin as he added, soft as silk, “And so shall those who will aid him in his path to true power.”

Hux bowed his head; on his thighs, his arms hands remained empty, closing on air. Here, there was no trigger within reach. And only then did he think that no, _this_ was where the truest mistakes of his life would really begin.


End file.
